What the &@$! Is going on?

[bstaubs22]

Can anyone explain to me what is going on with this game that I love so much? I\'m 29 years old and I grew up going to the track with my grandpa at CD, hanging with him in the paddock where he taught me how to read a form. Like clockwork every Thanksgiving we would head to the track to escape the usually drudgery of sitting around chatting with the fam to go and bet P. Day and try and cash the late double. He taught me a lot of what I know today but looking back, never in a million years as a teenager could I have thought the game that I love is heading in this direction. We\'ve got a SuperVet on the loose who goes from track to track with his secret potion enhancing 3 yos who deliver performances rivaling the best horses ever. Something fishy out west as Drug O\'Neil is \"having another\" and at it again as his horse suddenly freaks out of nowhere(it was this time last year when he was found guilty of milk shaking, AGAIN!!) Then you have this crap with Baffert and the rat poison(anti-coagulants) where he has no comment and no one will say anything from the CHRB. Can you even think about blood doping with thoroughbreds?
Someone has to know something about what these guys are doing behind closed doors. Who will step up and help protect the industry? (horses and horseplayers!)

BTW in case you missed it Shanghai Bobby is sidelined with a sudden injury that explains his bad performance in the Fla Derby according to TAP.

I\'m sure he won\'t be the only one. The question is, will your horse be next?

[Edgorman]

Great post man.  I never went to the track with my grandfather. But I miss, so much, the time I spent at the races with my father. At 29 I think you are an anomaly amongst your peers.  I wish there was some way you could spread the word. But the stuff going on now will not convert your friends. My father and I never thought of it while handicapping a race. It sucks. Treasure your memories.

[sighthound]

Doping horses is as old as horse racing, as old as the Triple Crown.  Clean racing is the anomaly. And racing has never been as clean as it is now.

[Dana666]

If you were 50, you\'d say this has been going on for 50 years! California is the worst though. I can tell you that from experience. But we\'re the dumb suckers who keep playing. No one puts a gun to our heads. The game was designed for aristocrats who were above the petty considerations of profit and loss and all about sport and only sport--that life was gone decades and decades ago--except perhaps in Dubai. Now, you\'ve got a bunch of greedy fools who were too dumb to make it on Wall Street (takes a whole different kind of evil and intelligence to make it there), so they concentrate on this pathetic game. Like an endless wheel of karma as the abused beasts go round and round the tracks, we watch, wager, whatever, and think somehow we\'re above the suffering because once in a while we get lucky or randomness smiles on us. What you cherished about your grandfather was the time he shared with you, the track happened to be the background. Don\'t romanticise it, kid. Believe me. If you long for the love you shared with him, create it anew, go find it somewhere legit. Spend your life in this game and you\'ll be one sorry son-of-a-bitch by the time your my age. I can promise you that. Don\'t ever think this game is anything other than it is.

[bstaubs22]

So what you\'re asking me to believe is that trainers and vets will always cheat and we as horseplayers and fans will just have to sit back and watch as more and more horses go down, or in Dreaming of Julia\'s case move way up beyond belief? You are telling me there is nothing anyone can do about it?

[toppled]

Ain\'t that the truth!  
Back when I was the OP\'s age, Oscar Barrera went from relative obscurity into a magician on the NYRA circuit. He even sent his son Oscar Jr down to Florida with whatever potion they were using.  One day Oscar gets called in & suspended in NY for some minor infraction.  After that he went back into obscurity & then died.  Jr then went to the minors, training mainly at Finger Lakes and he and his son Oscar III are still toiling there, occasionally shipping into NY & there for a few races each winter.  Most of the other hot trainers from that era have also disappeared, train in relative obscurity, or passed on.  
I\'m sure someone 30 years older than me, if they\'re still alive, can name the drug trainers when they were 29; and 30 years from now there will be a new generation of magician trainers.

Edit:  Here\'s an article by Andy Beyer written back in 1991 for anyone too young to remember OSB or for those who want to remember cashing on him because it was better to join him than to try to beat him.
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-04-11/sports/sp-221_1_oscar-barrera

[sighthound]

The vast majority of trainers and veterinarians do not cheat.

There are, at the major tracks, veterinarians that examine each horse in the morning of a race and pull the lame ones the trainer still wants to enter.

Those same veterinarians are in the paddock, on the track, at the gate, watching horses come off, then in the test barn during each race, pulling horses based upon what they see, when a jock asks them to examine the horse as it\'s warming up, etc.  The public is unaware if this, generally.

Testing occurs out-of-competition, and in-competetition where literally thousands of drugs can be detected down to levels so minute, the amount of drug detected is literally unable to affect a horses performance - may have been on a grooms hands the day before.

So yes, there are some trainers that cheat - they usually get caught.  Yes, there is stuff that is currently non-detectable, and the industry struggles to keep up. That is the minority. Not the majority. Every horse in every race should be tested IMO.  Industry can\'t or won\'t fund that.

But those people are definitely not the vast majority, and \"magic move up drugs\" affecting horses performances are certainly not as rampantly use as some seem to think.  

I know some of the trainers I\'ve seen slammed by the public over the decades don\'t cheat, never would, never have.  But some of the public just says, \"oh, it\'s undetectable magic chemistry, sure they cheat, we just can\'t catch them\".  Sometimes it\'s just not there. The public sort of refuses to ever consider that.  That perception is a problem.  Fantasy accusations don\'t help.  Funding to catch the few cheaters left is what is needed.

[Dana666]

You can choose not to play. Or maybe you can form a group, get with some concerned people. Maybe you can effect change. How do I know? But remember, the gambler is the lowest level of priority among racing industry types. They don\'t care one whit about gamblers, and politicians and media people also cast a negative view on gambling and gamblers (though they\'re happy to get the tax revenues), so you won\'t get much respect. Nowadays, poker gets a little respect, but horseplayers not so much. In NJ, for example, they sold all our NJ Wagering accounts to TVG, one of the worst on-line providers in the business. We had no say in the matter, and we\'re not legally allowed to go to other sites that offer better service. A back room deal to screw all the loyal players, as long as someone got paid off. Just typical, but as I said, you can\'t complain about what something is, you can either accept it or leave it, but don\'t think it\'s going to change organically. And the higher up you get in the food chain, the corruption only gets worse and worse.

You referenced Baffert before--well, you tell me what other trainer in the history of the sport could ever get maidens to run as fast as he does? First time out--unreal, right?  Is he really that much better than every other trainer who ever lived? Really? But who complains? Everybody loves his happy go lucky attitude, and they say he\'s \"good for the game.\" He is good for the game until his horses start dropping dead in front of everyone. But I digress. . .

[Dana666]

The vast majority don\'t cheat, really? Why does every horse use lasix then? Every thoroughbred bleeds, seriously?

I remember many years back when Charlie Whittingham went from being a 20% winner to about 5% in the span of a few years; suddenly he was surpassed by all these other guys. Charlie got dumb, and they all got smart, all at once, yeah right.

If you took a list of the top ten outfits in the country today, you\'d find numerious violations on almost all of them. Maybe you need to tell yourself they don\'t cheat. If that works for you, fine.

Here\'s your top ten from last year--tell me how many are legit in your mind??? I would say 1 that I could confirm with any confidence doesn\'t cheat. Mott--that\'s it (maybe Casse, I don\'t know him well). Check the violations for everyone else on that list. Eight of of ten of those outfits are \"super trainers\" huge move -up numbers types. C\'mon man, don\'t feed that kid BS and tell him it\'s caviar.

1   Todd A. Pletcher   851   232   129   103   $20,930,980   27%   55%
2   Bob Baffert   534   153   108   69   $14,988,006   29%   62%
3   Steven M. Asmussen   1,346   284   218   208   $13,199,281   21%   53%
4   Dale L. Romans   759   124   100   108   $11,822,394   16%   44%
5   Chad C. Brown   494   138   96   75   $11,060,710   28%   63%
6   William I. Mott   617   101   94   75   $10,879,167   16%   44%
7   Mark E. Casse   675   129   114   101   $10,234,707   19%   51%
8   Doug F. O\'Neill   544   92   91   75   $7,763,762   17%   47%
9   Jerry Hollendorfer   1,047   209   192   171   $7,514,063   20%   55%
10   Richard E. Dutrow, Jr.   512   128   98   71   $7,124,182   25%   58%

Read more on BloodHorse.com: http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/thoroughbred-racing/leaders/leading-trainers/2012#ixzz2QGpPkImH

[Dana666]

Look at the next ten on the list; you got stalwart citizens, masters of honest hard work and equine wisdom like Mike Maker, Rudy R., Sadler, and Ness. I\'m laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair. Seriously, I have to post and read these more often.

[sighthound]

>> The vast majority don\'t cheat, really? Why does every horse use lasix then? Every thoroughbred bleeds, seriously?

Lasix is an approved medication, how is using it cheating?  Yes, reams of published scientific fact regarding EIPH proves that virtually every TB horse experiences EIPH.

So at this point, where long-proven, unquestionable fact is being ignored at the onset, with zero factual support, and nonsense being stated as fact - I\'m throwing my hands up in the air and giving up trying to inject any rationality or education or medical reality into any discussion of how to stop cheating in the TB world with gamblers.  Gamblers have rarely actually helped us fight cheating.  

BTW, out of your list, I suspect four of trying to cheat. I can confirm four of not cheating.  I suggest YOU check the violations on that list, and please publish it here.

[sighthound]

Yeah, too bad I said the majority of trainers in the TB business don\'t cheat, and didn\'t say that the list of the top twenty trainers doesn\'t include any cheaters.

Nice straw-man.

[Dana666]

Who are your 4? I\'m shocked you could come up with that many!

Look, you want to comission a study, I\'ll do the research. But I\'ve got to be paid, would take hundreds of hours.  They do publish this stuff though. In California, all the top trainers have violations, period. You can find it on the CHRB website, I think.

I lived this crap for the last twnety years. My eyes seldom lie. Sheets almost never lie. As I said, believe what you want. I don\'t care, really. I was tryng to give that guy a little advice. His post touched me, OK? I used to go to track with my father. Just made me think of how stupid I\'ve been all thse years. Bullshit sentimentality is all it is. Has nothing to do with the reality of the game.

You\'re smart. You haven\'t been damaged by this stuff, you bet on legit races, then God Bless you. I really mean that. I wish you all the best. Just don\'t tell me what I know.

[sighthound]

C\'mon, Dana :-)  It\'s not an argument to say, \"look at the high number of violations in these trainers, they prove what I say!\"  and then say, \"but it would take hundreds of hours to actually count that\".

\"Sheets almost never lie\" - well, that is certainly an opinion disproved by the reality of gambling!  All figures are merely an attempt at objectively assessing a performance with infinite variables, based upon fact and tempered by the educated opinion of the figure maker.

BTW, to keep this board-related, I think TGJB does that best.

[jerry]

Yes.